Abstract
The influence of Co adatoms on the quantum well states (QWSs) existing in Cu/Co(100) multilayers is investigated by means of ab initio calculations. The typical oscillations of the density of states at the Fermi level as a function of the number of Cu layers are found to be strongly perturbed by the presence of adatoms on the surface. In a lateral direction, the QWSs exhibit atomic-scale variations, which depend on the number of Cu layers. These results suggest that the phase accumulation model, which is often used for analyzing QWS, is not sufficient to interpret electronic features near adatoms and call for experimental real-space investigations of QWS.